Hard Working American Families will Suffer from Tax Scam Bill – Daines Greed to be Rewarded

The GOP tax bill will fundamentally redistribute wealth and stretch the rate of inequality in our country to an unsustainable level. This bill will transfer the wealth in our nation to the 1% while raiding middles class programs from future generations. The GOP continues to claim that by simply pilfering our nation’s treasury and giving this money to billionaires and corporations somehow the benefits will trickle down to us.

No one in this country believes this anymore. There is no constituency for this. Steve Daines and Greg Gianforte voted against the best interests of Montanans when they voted to pass this giveaway to the rich on the back of working families. They actually voted themselves millions of dollars too.

No one believes this voodoo economics works, no one believes it besides Paul Ryan and college Republicans who sleep with an Ayn Rand book under their pillows. Since the 1980s, the Reaganomics of the GOP has hollowed out the income and programs for the middles class, led to numerous Wall Street and banking crises, and exploded our national debt.

This scam tax bill is gift wrapped this Holiday Season with a sabotage of the Affordable Care Act too!

The final tax bill repeals the individual mandate of the ACA. Without a mandate by the government to provide healthcare to its citizens or a mandate that citizens buy health insurance, healthier people will leave the healthcare pool and raise costs in that pool.

By repealing the mandate, healthier folks will forgo insurance leaving only sicker individuals in the ACA marketplace exchanges. This will continue the dramatic rise in premium increases we have seen this year due to the Republican’s continual sabotage of the ACA. Even with the paltry middle-class benefits handed out by Republicans in the tax bill, the repeal of this mandate alone will eat away any extra savings families may receive.

Also, under the final version of this bill is the corporate tax cut from 35% to 21%. During a time of record corporate profits, there have been no wage increases for American workers. The GOP seems to think that this is because the corporate tax rate is too high. Yet, CEOs recently told the Trump administration they will not use any money they receive from the tax bill to raise wages or invest in their companies. They will do exactly what they have always done since the dawn of Reagan, use these tax breaks to buyback more of their stocks to boost corporate profits. Trickle, Trickle.

And, there is no real tax reform within this bill to close loopholes that help corporations move their money overseas via Panama and Switzerland etc. There is a small one-time repatriation tax of 7.5% on corporate profits being returned to the U.S., but without numerous tax loopholes being closed, there is no incentive to return this money, ever.

The only real attempt to give the middle and working class more income is with the doubling of the Standard Deduction and an increase to the child tax credit, but only $300 a year. That’s nowhere near how much it costs to feed, clothe, educate, or care for a child. Yet, even these benefits come at a price. By repealing the personal exemption taxpayers can claim on for each member of their family and the $10,000 limit on deductions to state and local taxes, many middles class families will actually see their taxes increases. For most families and individuals, most of these benefits will be considered worthless when they are offset by the increases to healthcare costs and now possibly jacked up internet access rates we will have to pay.

And another tradeoff for these economic scraps is the repeal of the Estate Tax for all estates lower than $11.2 million and the lowering of taxes on the wealthiest Americans by 2.6%. So, you work hard every day to put food on your table for your family only to get $300 bucks for a child and maybe a better tax return by taking the standard deduction instead of itemizing. All while the Kochs and the DeVos families reap millions on unearned income.

In this tax bill, none of the wealthy lose, none of them are missing an exemption that helps their family earn income. None of them are trading a higher tax credit for the elimination of the other. And all of the wealthy elites are keeping their loopholes to benefit themselves, their families, and their investors.

Ultimately, the GOP Tax bill will increase the national debt by at least $1.5 trillion over the next ten years. In that ten years, we know there will be a recession, big or small, we know a correction in the market will occur and there will be a recession. That is how the market works when you have outrageous wealth backed by no real increases in production, it’s a bubble and it will burst.

The U.S. government is the only institution large enough to bail out a depressed economy. The Obama Administration had a mix of tax cuts and stimulus spending to stabilize the economy in 2009. We can argue that it wasn’t a big enough stimulus package to help the economy recover quicker, about $800 billion, but the stimulus package was absolutely necessary.

Now we are looking at adding $1.5 trillion to the deficit in tax cuts for an economy with record-breaking stocks and an unemployment at 4.1%. This bill goes against every economic theory except for those funded by Koch Brother’s think tanks. Every top economist believes this bill will significantly increase the national debt far beyond $1.5 trillion while doing nothing to fix the major underlying problems of our economy.

This tax bill is unnecessary and makes no sense, and will only lead to cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security when this boom goes bust and the Republicans again pretend to care about the national debt. If these tax cuts don’t pay for themselves, which they never do, it will trigger automatic cuts to Medicare because of the budget stabilization measures Congress has put in place to reduce the deficit.

Now is not the time to be giving away tax breaks to Republican mega-donors and their corporate backers. Now is the time to be saving for the raining day that will eventually come. Now is the time to fix the underlying problems of wage stagnation and income inequality. Now is the time to invest in our crumbling infrastructure, the wages of American workers, and the programs that directly help the middle class. Programs like, Medicare, Social Security, Federal Student Loans, and home ownership.

The only real way to grow the middles class is the continuation and expansion of these programs, while increasing real wages. Getting an income tax break on a minimum wage job of 7.25/hr will do next to nothing for actual wealth generation in this country. To increase wealth and take home pay for working Americans, we need higher hourly wages. Economic growth is directly linked to workers having enough income to actually participate in the economy. This is what causes growth, not handing back needed tax dollars to the rich who don’t need them. This is not how healthy countries function.

Hard working Americans must take a page from the playbooks of the Koch’s, DeVos’, and the GOP. Nothing will be given to you in the country, we must unite and demand fair wages and fight for $15/hr across this country. Then and only then will real economic expansion take place, and wealth will again be gained by the middle class.

If this tax bill passes, billionaires and corporations will be flush with taxpayer’s cash. Now is the time to take our money back by fighting to raise the minimum wage everywhere. The GOP and Koch think tanks are somewhat correct that tax cuts to the wealthy could raise wages, because we the people are fed up with this financial robbery, and we are going to raise OUR wages OURSELVES.

If you appreciate an independent voice holding Montana politicians accountable and informing voters, and you can throw a few dollars a month our way, we would certainly appreciate it.